- The Aviot WA-J1 will ship worldwide in July
- Three drivers combined: piezo, planar and dynamic
- Price converts to about $270 / £200 / AU$424
The Japanese audio brand Aviot has introduced what it says is the world’s first “Tribrid” 3-driver headphones, the WA-J1 – and it’s made a special edition in collaboration with the J-pop star Hyde.
What’s a Tribrid? According to Aviot, it’s one piezo driver, one planar magnetic driver, and one dynamic driver, and together they deliver “overwhelming information density and unprecedented acoustic performance”.
And they do it for an incredibly long time: battery life is a claimed 140 hours, though it’s not specified if that’s with active noise cancellation or not (I have to assume not).
When three drivers are better than one
As Aviot explains, the piezo driver is there for the high frequencies, and the planar and dynamic drivers are placed coaxially with it to take care of the mids and lows, all with very low distortion and very little phase disturbance. The result, the firm says, is very high precision.
Supported audio formats include LDAC and Bluetooth LE Audio (that latter one via a future update) as well as the obligatory AAC and SBC, and there’s adaptive noise cancelling with a transparency mode.
The headphones also offer 3D spatial audio. That option is adjustable via the control dial, enabling you to spatialize audio to suit your personal preference – from very flat to very reverberant sonic spaces. And for gamers, there’s a low-latency mode to reduce lag.
The headphones will go on sale in Japan in July 2025 with a price tag of 39,600 yen – roughly $270 / £200 / AU$424 – and will be available to ship worldwide.
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